Achmed Abdullah (1881-1945) was a popular novelist, short story writer, and screenwriter in the early and mid-twentieth century. Today, he may be best remembered as the screenwriter (and later novelist) of The Thief of Bagdad and the screenwriter of The Lives of a Bengal Lancer. He ws a compulsive mythomaniac concerning his background, claiming his birth father was a Russian Grand Duke and cousin of Czar Nicholas Romanoff (he wasn't), and that he attended Eton College and Oxford University (he didn't) -- but the claims made good publicity. He also variously claimed his full name was either "Achmed Abdullah Nadir Khan el-Durani el-Iddrissyeh" or "Alexander Nicholyevitch Romanoff." Most of his writings were in the romance, adventure, and fantasy genres. "The Magic of the Canniibal" in a rare volume of stories from the "Creeps Library" published by Philip Allan of London; to my knowledge, the story has never been reprinted.
The Magic of the Cannibal
by The Sheikh A. Abdullah
(from Mysteries of Asia, London: Philip Allan, 1935)
Ever since the gangway was lifted at Colombo, and I saw a tall, sunburnt visage of a middle-aged Englishman under a particularly worn topee, I had thought that I knew the man. Constantly I had come up face to face with him when the steamer ploughed its way through them open seas towards Aden. Beyond a side glance the curious and aloof man defied acquaintance. But something fascinated me about my fellow-passenger. He had almost an occult influence on me; till, one night when the stars hung in bunches like giant and glowing pieces of the moon from the sky, that enchanting scene so gripped me that my coffee cup slipped from my hand. It rolled over the railing and fell into the lap of someone sitting in his deckchair. The man woke up with a start, as if from a trance, and as I hastened to apologize, my eyes met the same mysterious, silent man who, I thought, had been making an extra effort to avoid me.
After profound apologies, I resolved to take the opportunity. "Pardon me," I said, "but have we met before?" The man looked up. "Yes," he grunted, 'yes, perhaps we have met in the moon." That grunt of his -- a little mannerism as it was -- flashed a host of memories. It emboldened me. "We have met in the moon, old boy." I spoke half-humorously. "Come, come, Charlie, do you forget that Pathology class room?" He had stiffened ever so slightly, then he gave it up, and the whole association of our undergraduate days was recounted.
He has failed twice in his finals. The professor had been hard on him, he thought. The War came on, he served in the army, and then, after a little love affair, went to the East to lose himself. But now he was returning. He did not want to know any of his old haunts. Whether Muriel had gone to Canada or had married someone else he did not care. He just wanted to spend a quiet summer in England after a dreadful time in the wilds of Ceylon.
Not till the steward was putting out the lights did we realize that we were on the wrong side of the deck, where the ladies slept. But Charles Munro, besides being a good all-round cricketer, and a mimic of his national bard, was also a good story-teller. What he began to tell me of his experiences in the back of beyond interested me so much that we went to the men's side of the deck. Within ten minutes we, too, brought our mattresses on the deck, and I was once again listening to him. "You did not stick long to your botanical researches?" I asked. "Well," he said, with that Scottish drawl which was characteristic of him. "Well, you see, I got into a sort of a man-eater's business." "Man-eaters! Good heavens! You were not amongst the cannibals!"
It transpired that he had qualified in some way or other in pharmacology in Kandy, and to do research he had sallied forth to collect some herbs, which the native thought would cure malaria. One day he set out in search of those uncharted regions of the island, which even the aeroplanes have not been able to penetrate. Charlie was desperate, he did not care what happened to him. He would be a discoverer, an explorer of the herb that would free mankind from fever. But now I must let him use his own words.
"Desperately," he said, "I wandered on, the terror of the jungle was on me. It was unnerving and paralyzing my volition. I was indeed lost in these endless and pitiless leagues of enveloping greenness without hope of exit or rescue. Fool that I had been not to take the advice of my shikari! I did not know Ceylon, I had not bargained for such conditions as I now found myself in. Beaten, exhausted, I floundered on mechanically, my rifle feeling heavy as the beam of a house on my tired shoulder.
"Suddenly I heard the baying of a hound in the distance. The sound, menacing as it was, aroused my flickering hopes. It would, if followed up, lead me out of the labyrinth in which I was weakly floundering. Again, the deep baying sounded on the calm evening air, then. as if the whole of Hades had broken loose, it was succeeded by a chorus of such infernal barking and yelling as I had never heard before. The furious din checked my progress, I halted and listened. Would it be safe to proceed in that direction? It would certainly not be safe to stay where I was, and the hubbub, threatening as it sounded, would at least lead me out of my present perilous position -- to land me in a worse one, perhaps. Well, I had come to the end of my tether and had no choice. I 'faced the music,' and pressed on in the direction of what seemed to be pack of hounds let loose and hot on the track of their prey.
"Then, suddenly, I stopped dead once more, for the awful thought had occurred to me that I myself might be that 'prey,' the object of that clamourous quest. Even as I halted, I noticed that the jungle had grown less dense. Pressing forward, I emerged all at once into the bright sunshine and in view of a strange enough picture.
"In a clearing between jungle and jungle, an island of plain between two seas of forest, stood the most incongruous building it has ever been my lot to see -- yes, actually stood, for this was not fiction but actual autobiography. Think of a medieval tower cast out of England or Normandy into the midst of a Cingalese landscape! On one side of it stood a long, low building, evidently kennels, and issuing from this I beheld a pack of some twenty large hounds of a breed I was quite unable to place. No two of them were alike, and I judged them to be mongrels between the bloodhound and other large breeds, at least many of them had undoubted bloodhound characteristics. I have seen such dogs in the Portuguese towns of India, and I have reason to believe they had been brought from Pondicherry.
"Behind them stood a curious figure, a white man in stripe pyjamas, the trousers of which were tucked into long, laced-up field-boots. He wore a solar topee, so that at that distance I could not see his face. But I was not occupied at the moment with personal idiosyncrasies or appearances. The hounds, sighting me, gave a full cry, and came at me like a speckled wave.
" 'Look out!' I yelled, raising my rifle, 'if your dog attack me I shall shoot -- and it won't be at the dogs.'
"Their master heard, even at that distance, and snapped out an order. Instantly the brutes came to a stop, whimpering and whining like a horde of disappointed wolves. I walked slowly towards the man with the solar helmet, and now I could see his eyes -- curious eyes they were, eager, strained, and bloodshot, the restless eyes of a debauchee, it seemed to me.
"'It's late for hunting,' I said, 'but your hounds have got me in a fix. I was lost in the jungle.'
" 'Several people have been lost there,' he replied in strange but cultivated tones, although with a srong foreign accent. 'That's why I have the dogs out. They have...er...rescued me from a few wanderers."
" 'That's a queer house of yours, if you'll excuse me for saying so,' I ventured, 'quite like the ogre's castle in a fairy tale, isn't it?'
" 'The ogre's castle,' he repeated. 'You think so? Well. you're all in, I expect. You had better come inside and lie down for a bit,' and turning and whistling to his dogs he led the way to the tower. Within, it was comfortable enough, and evidently had been made suitable to tropical conditions. The ground floor was the living room, two airy bedrooms composed the second storey. As to the third, I only saw it once.
"I learned that my host's name was Kreimer, or so I shall style him. He was a heavy cumbrous-looking man of an obviously lazy habit, about fifty, perhaps, fleshy and unwholesome. His only servant was a Cingalese, a creature of quite extraordinary suavity.
"But I was in case to quarrel with circumstances, and after an excellent supper of curry which might have been cooked in the best club in Calcutta, I was shown my room, and slept like a man in a legend. And while I slept I dreamed -- nor were my dreams pleasant.
"They were rather chaotic and indescribable, those dreams of mine, but their central motif seemed to be a horrible, unnerving sensation of constant rustling, to which the baying of the hounds played a menacing accompaniment. Rustle, rustle, the weird sound continued throughout the night, like the leaves of a windswept wood in June, and, even though I slept, I had a sensation of the nearness of bodiless presences which filled me with vague unrest. I awoke unrefreshed and almost as weary as I had been the night before, but I washed and dressed, and, descending, put the best face on things I could. Kreimer was in the living-room, and what I saw him do I did not like.
"At first I though he was drinking a glass of wine. But when I drew closer, I saw to my horror that it was not wine.
" "Good morning,' he said affably enough, as he finished his drink. 'You seem surprised at the nature of my refreshment, but it's doctor's orders.'
" 'Indeed,' I said, most inadequately, wishing myself for some instinctive reason a thousand miles away from this man.
" 'Yes. I find fresh blood wonderful as a morning pick-me-up,' he continued almost carelessly. 'Ever tried it?"
" 'Good gracious, no!' I retorted, suddenly angry, I know not why.
" 'But you drink milk, don't you?' he asked, as if surprised, 'and what is milk but white blood?'
"I made no reply, and we sat down to a breakfast of kedgeree and coffee, well served by his Cingalese man-servant. how it was I accepted his invitation to stay for a week I cannot say. the man had a strange fascination about him, and I have always been strangely attracted by odd personalities.
" 'This is a wonderful spot for a cheetah.' he said, as he lit a cheroot. "I course them with the hounds. Suppose we try our luck before tiffin? Youi won't need a gun, it's all dog work. Better start at once while its reasonably cool, if you don't mind.'
"He had touched me on one of my weak spots. Of course, cheetah are not hunted that way at all, but I was keen to see a new method. So in ten minutes he had routed out the dogs, and was waiting for meaty the door.
" 'By the way, Sahib,' he said, looking at me strangely, 'the dogs aren't used to you, and I admit they're a trifle uncertain with strangers. Suppose you walk towards the jungle and watch the proceedings from cover. My man and I will drive them in the opposite direction, and as it's all flat country hereabouts you'll get a capital view of the sport when we rouse one of the spotted fellows. What do you say?'
"I looked at the hounds, leaping, snapping, and snarling, and he didn't have to ask me twice. So, while he and his man held them on the leash, I made for the wall of trees about a quarter of a mile away.
"I had gone perhaps a couple of hundred yards when I heard the yapping and whining change suddenly to the noise of a pack in full cry. Surprised that they had already roused a cheetah, I turned. The pack, with baying heads and tails high in the air was rushing in my direction!
"For an instant I stood sock-still, incapable of believing I was their quarry. But a second glance sufficed to make it certain. The brutes were running towards me as if possessed, and Kreimer was waving them on with haloos and hunting cries as a man might a pack of beagles. With a sudden oath of terrified anger, I put down my head and dashed in the direction of the jungle at top speed.
"Well for me was it that I was a sprinter in those days and in good form. One stumble, one false step, and I should have been done for. I had more than two hundred years to make, and those brutes were not more than half that distance behind me when my warning came. I ran like a man who feels death clutching at his windpipe, sobbing, cursing, in a surge of frightful anger. My heart rose in my throat and half-smothered me like the grip of an enemy. By the time I made the sheltering trees I was all in, merely reduced to a smashed and crumpled pair of lungs, drawing like broken bellows. With the last of my frenzied strength I shinned up a tree and stared down at the howling demons below me, leaping and frothing like maddened wolves. In another two minutes Kreimer came up.
" 'A thousand apologies, my dear young ma,' he shouted, 'the brutes got jut of hand. I simply couldn't restrain them.'
"'You devil,' I sobbed, 'didn't I see you driving them on, you infernal murderer!'
" 'You're mistaken, I assure you,' he said, simply looking at me queerly. almost hungrily, noe the less; 'I was shouting at them to keep them back.'
" 'Tell your man to take them to the kennels,' I said, 'for I have something to say to you.'
" 'Certainly, he'll take them back,' he replied with a great show of willingness, and gave the necessary orders. At a words, the hounds, which seemed to be absolutely under the domination of the Cingalese, trotted away behind him to the kennels. When they were at a reasonable distance, I descended and faced Kreimer. but I faced a man with a revolver in his hand.
"He might have bristled with revolvers, but I was instantly at his throat. Then a strange thing happened. As I seized him, he crumpled up like paper in my arms, and slipped to the ground. I fell heavily on top of him. His white face stared into mine. I knew he ws dead as I looked into the glazed eyes.
"The heart had given way suddenly like a broken piston. Horrified, and shaken, I called loudly to the Cingalese. At the third cry he came running to me. He bent over the face of the dead.
" 'This is no marvel,' he said calmly. 'He was a bad man. The gods have slain him out of the sky. Maybe some demon of the forest...' and he looked at me fearfully.
" 'Help me to carry him to the house,' I said, and without another word we bore the body back to the strange tower which it had so lately inhabited.
" 'Yes, he was a bad man,' babbled the Cingalese sententiously. 'He hunted other men...'
" 'What are you telling me?' I gasped, overcome with horror. 'Do you mean to say the man was a...a...madman?'
" 'No,' he replied gravely. 'He made me his slave and I had to obey. Strangers lost in the jungle cam hither; and he hunted them with his hounds, and then...'
" 'And then what?' I asked, but received no reply.
"The thing seemed incredible. Entering the house, I went through Kreimer's papers. The man was a Russian, a landowner, from the Crimea. His diary showed that he had undergone the experience of a terrible famine. Perhaps that had...but such surmises are better left unwritten.
"I resolved to remain in the castle until such time as some official came our way. Someone from the Woods and Forests Department would surely pay us a visit before long, I felt assured. I had nothing to fear. Kreimer had attempted my life and his death was due entirely to mishap, for I had scarcely touched him. My conscience was clear. and, moreover, it was impossible to communicate with the authorities from that jungle-surrounded place.
"We buried Kreimer that evening in the compound, and I made up my mind to shoot every one of those hounds the next morning. That night I slept not at all. I was conscious of the same rustling in my bedroom, a weird sound as of bodiless things moving in the darkness, so I rose and lit the lamp and smoked and read until dawn, when I fell at last into an uneasy dozing.
"And now comes the most dreadful part of my tale. How it happened, I do not presume to be able to say, but, after a few days, I had no inclination to quit Cain Castle, as I came to call the strange tower in which I found myself. At first it was something resembling curiosity which detained me there, that and a resolve to await the coming of someone in authority to whom I could relate the truth of what had happened to Kreimer. But, after few days I began to feel with growing horror and dismay that I was becoming attached to the place, that, indeed, it held a weird kind of fascination for me. I grew tolerant even of the hounds, and felt more disinclined to destroy them. After all...
"It was on the fourth day, I believe, that I began to experience a new phase of this particular obsession, for that is the only word I can discover for it. The horror with which I regarded the place and everything connected with it had entirely disappeared, and I found that not only could I tolerate Cain Castle, but that I had even a relish for the tower and its surroundings. No longer did I dread the rustling noises in the darkness of the night. I felt on the other hand something almost companionable and friendly in it.
"My conscience seemed numbed and clouded. I began to feel as though my very personality were undergoing an alteration. I remember now with horror the ghastly change which crept over me in that accursed place, but, at the time, if the reader will believe me, I experienced nothing of the nausea with which I now regard the unnatural metamorphosis which I saw gradually creeping over me, the new and vile character which invaded and enveloped my ego like a demonic possession,
"It is difficult for cold Northern people to realize the nature of the strange and occult influence native to an Eastern environment, and I sometimes think that it is well that they are so favoured. Little by little the influence, the horror, grew upon me. Soon I was a child in its grasp. I walked about like a man in a trance. The Cingalese saw the change and spoke warning words full of enigmatical meaning. He might as well have spoken to the walls around us. Some dark power immeasurably mightier than man had me in its grasp, soul and body. The baying of the hounds had become as music to me, and, curiously enough, they now displayed no unfriendliness, but leapt with joy at their fences when I appeared, fawning on me and licking my hands.
"One cloudy morning, dark, hot, mercilessly tropical, with the threat of thunder in the air, I rose, duller than ever in mind, and conscious of a craving which I could not describe to myself, a wild hunger which was yet not the nature of ordinary hunger, for the excellent breakfast the Cingalese placed before me remained untasted, arousing only nausea. Like a beast I stalked about the house, mooning from window to window. Ha, what was that? The hounds were baying wildly. Something within me, something unthinkably wild and savage, leapt tigerishly at the sound. I looked towards the jungle. A man in a white drill suit was staggering out of it, evidently in the same predicament as that in which I had found myself some ten days before. Then he seemed to disappear.
"I rushed upstairs to the top storey of the tower, the better to get sight of him and his movements, springing up the crazy stone steps like a panther. A wild-blood-lust possessed me. I experienced the overpowering joy and triumph that the great bests must feel at the sight of their prey.
"Behind me the Cingalese cried and babbled.
" 'Sire, sire, go not up there,' he pleaded. 'There is something there...something unholy.'
"The upper storey of the tower consisted of two rooms. So far I had only entered that on the opposite side, a room full of books, guns and hunting tackle. That which looked toward the jungle was locked. now, in a frenzy of passion, I threw myself against it. The crazy lock parted, and I was propelled into the place with terrific force. Stumbling to the cob-webbed window, I gazed through it with distended eyes, panting like a tiger behind bars. Ah, now I caught sight of the little white figure once again!
"The hounds! How they yelled! My impulse was to descend and turn them loose, to hunt, to capture, and then...even now, after many years, I turn sick and faint at the bare recollection of the ghastly desire which filled me with a tempest of longing. to seize, to tear, to bite -- yes, to bite, rich and deep!
"Something rolled dismally at my feet -- turned and rolled on the rotting boards. I looked down. A human skull circled slowly on its fleshless dome at my feet!
"Then revulsion, horror, loathing, descended on me like a quenching flood, burning out the fires of the abominable ardour I had felt. I knelt beside that grim relic, my face buried n my hands, quivering with shame and self-aversion, a spirit newly escaped from some awful pit and limbo of ancient deviltry in which I had languished for days of half-realized abandonment. What had I nearly become? With a cry I gazed around me. The room was literally stacked with human bones, the horrid trophies which Kreimer, the man-demon, the cannibal, had garnered there as momentoes of his unspeakable orgies.
"Nearly beside myself, I rushed below, through the compound and towards the now recumbent figure at the verge of the jungle. I had scarcely run more quickly when pursued by the hell-hounds on the day of the unspeakable Kreimer's death. The Cingalese followed me. We raised the fallen form of the Englishman who lay there. We carried him back to the tower, and poured brandy down his throat. In a little he revived somewhat and told a story similar to my own.
"For days he lingered between life and death, but through our unremitting care he progressed favourably and was at last able to leave, with proper instructions from the Cingalese as to his road and destination. He was a well-known botanist who had lost his comrades in the jungle. but his name I shall not mention here for the best of reasons.
"Two days later I was myself on the road to civilization, accompanied by the Cingalese. But before I went, I loaded every rifle and revolver in the tower -- and then I entered the kennels and did what I had to do there quickly and mercifully. When the last of the demon-dogs had yelped out its life, I turned to the tower. The Cingalese and I gathered all the dry timber in which we could lay out hands, shavings, paper, and, heaping it in the lower story, I set it alight. In a couple of hours nothing remained of Cain Castle but the blackened walls.
"When I returned to Colombo, I set inquiries on foot, and revealed in outline the history of the place. It had been built by an eccentric Englishman of means in the early part of the nineteenth century, an astrologer, who had retired to that remote district so that he might the better devote himself to the study of his mysterious art free from disturbance or interference. For at least a generation it had lain vacant and practically ruined, until, some two years before the opening of my story, it had been found and renovated by Kreimer. The mysterious disappearances of explorers did not arouse any especial remark, as it was thought they had perished inn the neighbouring jungle, which possessed a particularly bad reputation as a wilderness easy to lose oneself in. At the same time, it seems peculiar that the very considerable number of people who had gone missing in that particular locality during Kreimer's tenancy of the accursed tower had not aroused suspicion."
When Charlie finished, I felt that I could not sleep. the very waves of the ocean seemed to be full of yelping, barking dogs. But he was asleep in no time. He needed it more,
